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Comment by d_tr | Hacker News Reader

Speaking of nuance, catching and spreading the virus is not something you are either able or unable to do. If you (not you personally) are afraid of being vaccinated, you also have to accept the possibility that you might catch it more easily and also transmit more than the vaccinated version of yourself.

What does "the Delta variant won't be stopped" even mean? That deaths won't drop to zero? Well of course, this is not news.

This is an emergency situation and at least in my country, hospitals just cannot cope with the overwhelming number of patients and this severely affects people with other diseases as well.

So, being vaccinated is about you, but not only about you. You can't have it all.

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My point was that firing these people isn't going to be worth it. Delta is here to stay despite it all.

At some point you need to look past the medical data and look at the impact these divisive and discriminatory policies will have on the unvaccinated, which is roughly at ~15% of a countries population.

Are you happy to strip these people from their human rights?

Are you happy to discriminate against 15% of the population? Rejecting them from going shopping or other basic tasks?

Are you happy to push these people further into an ideological war with the mainstream?

What are the costs when governments like Australia deny their own citizens the right to move interstate or internationally, on a whim?

Are you happy to have a global vaccine passport, which will restrict your freedoms dramatically and automatically as soon as you decide against your next booster shot?

What are the costs when trust is eroded within society?

I can just tell you this right now: its simply not worth it.

No I am not happy about this situation at all and I am not sure how I would deal with it if I was in charge. This 15% is more like 40% in Greece by the way, and a bit more than this in my city.

“Individuals who have had two vaccine doses can be just as infectious as those who have not been jabbed.”

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-59077036

“can be” in that sentence just means the range of potential degrees of infectiousness overlap, which is not quite literally semantically null, but close enough as to make no practical difference.

Given they get infected in the first place, right? It is a posterior probability. This is the "Interpretation" paragraph from the linked Lancet paper:

> Vaccination reduces the risk of delta variant infection and accelerates viral clearance. Nonetheless, fully vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections have peak viral load similar to unvaccinated cases and can efficiently transmit infection in household settings, including to fully vaccinated contacts. Host–virus interactions early in infection may shape the entire viral trajectory.

Also note that the study is about household settings (which are responsible for the majority of transmissions according to the article), where the exposure is prolonged, and the faster decline of the viral load in vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections cannot make much difference.

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